REPORT FROM SIERRA MADRE #1

David Werner

Copyright by David Werner
1966

 

 

INTRODUCTION

It has been my original intention to remain in the village of Ajoya only long enough to arrange for a burro train to transport the medicines to the high country of the Sierra. But Nature has had her surprises waiting for me, and my friends back in Palo Alto have had theirs. The result has been that now, some eights weeks later, I am at last getting my small cavalcade in motion. But perhaps it is better this way, not only have I come to know and love the Pueblo of Ajoya, but by now each little village and rancho along the way has extended its invitation to me, and has offered to transport my cargo to the next. Already many villagers have come for medicines from as far away as Jocuixtita, Verano, and Caballo de Arriba (up to 40 miles by burro trail into the mountains). Wherever I go I know I will be welcome.

However, to be honest, it is not easy for me to leave Ajoya. In the relatively short time I have been here I have made friends with many, many of the villagers, I have been inside 60 of the 91 casas of the village, and have dined in nearly as many. When I arrived there was an enormous amount of sickness here. Although now there is noticeably less, there is still a fair share. This is to be expected in a village with over a thousand inhabitants, mostly children, and not a single ‘escusado’, where the drinking water comes from the river below, and where the average campesino, with 10 to 12 children, has a daily wage of l0 to 12 pesos (less than a dollar) with the result that many meals are composed of “puras tortillas,” without even frijoles to supplement the diet. Yet when I walk through the streets I am not aware of sickness. I am aware of friendliness, warmth, the enormous vitality of the people. I do not mean to say that the village is lacking in cruelty or in closed-mindedness. But never are these elements directed at me. I am loved here and cared for, as perhaps I have never been before. The people still have trouble in understanding why I give so much of my time and energy and medicines without asking for one centavo, and my explaining to them only increases their wonder. Yet in truth they have already given me far more than I would be able to repay in a life time. I am grateful to the villagers here for their acceptance of me, and to all those people back in the United States whose assistance has helped to make my project here possible.

The following report is in the form of a more or less chronological journal... in short, it is just as I wrote it, from day to day, or more accurately, from night to night, whenever I could snatch the time to write. Fortunately the nights are long, and in a village where there is no electricity and even coal-oil is a large expense, the villagers bed early. Fortunately, also, a girl named Ramona - about whom the town’s people like to kid me as being my “novia” - has made available to me a room and a kerosene lamp where I can work into the night. Thus “poco a poco” I have assembled this rough account. I regret that I have not had time to polish and rewrite, or even to round out the portrait of the village here, but every day has been filled with new events and discoveries which seem urgent to record, and now that I am leaving Ajoya it seems a good time to dispatch the first number, ready or not.

David Werner,
January 29, 1966

THE RIVER

To arise in Ajoya in the morning and go to the river is to emerge from a cocoon. Life inside the village is so human, so animal, so much a thing of the soil, so full of suffering and of relief, But at the river life becomes magical, ethereal, enchanting.

This morning the river is rising after the rains. It has turned a yellow brown. It has long since risen above the spot where yesterday the women came to bale water from a hole dug among the rocks at the, river’s edge, and I wonder what the drinking water will be like during the days to come. Will it be the yellow, muddy water of the river? There is already so much sickness in the village, so much diarrhea. What will this water be like, washing over the very soil where the people go to defecate. In the night old Micaela, the abuela of the casa where I stay, put a bucket under the tile eves to catch the rain -- good clean water from the sky -- but it will never last until the river clears.

Now, upstream, I see two women, one with a square, gallon, metal drum, the other with two “ollas” wading out into the rushing yellow waters. There is a rocky bar still protruding from the center of the river, forming an island. They wade out onto the bar, letting their skirts drop. One of the women, about two feet from the edge of the bar, makes a hole by removing rocks and gravel and sand. Then. they stand, waiting. I look beyond the river, to the dark mountains.

At last it has stopped raining, and the clouds are beginning to break over the mountains. A few white puffs of lower clouds stand out like strips of cotton against the dark slopes.

In the stringy tree growing from the high bank on which I stand a chestnut colored titmouse alights, then flits to a lower branch in search of insects, his bright eye tipping this way and that. Beneath me, near the rushing water, a spotted sandpiper darts from one protruding mud bar to another.

One of the women, taking from her bucket a scoop made from half a gourd, carefully dips water from the hole in the rock bar. Little by little she fills the buckets and the drum. Each woman helps the other place the containers on their heads, and slowly they wade into the rushing water, barefooted, feeling their way for purchase on the rocky bottom, while the balanced buckets of water sway perilously but never fall. Reaching the near bank of the flooded river, the women have to pick their way through the thicket on the steep slope, for the rising waters have covered the path.

Behind me an old man, legs bowed from much riding of mules and burros, and perhaps from scarcity of milk in his childhood, approaches, eyeing me with curiosity, as I stand on my perch overlooking the river.

“Esta subiendo” I say, nodding to the river. The old man comes up to where I stand and looks down at the turbulent waters, then eyes the two women sorting their tray among the rocks and underbrush.

“Esta muy feo, el rio.” he says extending a dark, wrinkled hand.

“Sí,” I reply, and think to myself, “ “pero muy hermosa también.”

The women now pass us, winding their way up the steep path toward the village. The old man nods to the older woman, who, being the first to emerge from the brush onto the path, is now well ahead of the younger. “Muy feo, el rio,” he says.

The older woman, perhaps a little annoyed by so self-evident an observation, scarcely glances up from beneath her bucket and replies, “¡Pués claro!”

The half gourd floats on top of the full bucket. The water looks clear and clean.

LAS CABANUELAS

The village of Ajoya is the link between the lowlands and the Sierra. It is 27 kilometers from the town of San Ignacio, but the road that connects it is so poor that one can walk the distance in twice the time it takes to cover it in a motor vehicle, and few are the vehicles that can make it. Most travel over the rough road is undertaken on foot or on horse or burro-back, and the majority of the residents of Ajoya make the journey seldom, if at all. In many respects the village is nearly as isolated as that of Jocuixtita or Verano.

The day we arrived in Ajoya (Dec. 8) the weather was muggy and hot. Winter had still not arrived. But it was closer on our tails than I realized. In the afternoon as we drove in a strong wind suddenly arose, shaking the few leaves on the trees and billowing clouds of dust. Mike Garbett, who had made the trip down with me to take my Jeep back to the States, asked me if such wind was normal here, for there was something strange, even spooky about it. I said I had not experienced it before.

We arrived at sundown, and José Vidaca, who had helped our Pacific High School group so much the year before, invited us into his home. During the night the sky clouded over, and in the-morning it was dark and ominous. The people of the village kept looking upwards and saying to each other, “Va a llover,” or simply, “¡Ya viene!”

And then it came: a few fat drops exploding in the dust, then the downpour. As we stood in the “portal” of the casa poking out into the street the water streamed down as from a hundred hoses from the tile roof, forming a giddy curtain.

“You’d better take off for the highway pronto,” I said to Mike, “or you’ll never make it!” And sprinting through the waterfall he scrambled. into the Jeep and departed... I assume he made it alright, as no word has come back to the contrary.

“No va a salir por unos días,” said José as he watched the rain pour down and I nodded...

Now it has been raining off and on for six days. The river has risen a good two feet, and still there are heavy rain clouds in the mountains. José and everyone else assures me that travel at this time is impossible, and that the trails will remain precarious for a week or more after the rain stops... if it stops. For now the “cabanuelas” -- winter rains -- have begun, and if it proves to be a wet season, they may continue as late as the end of January! The entire village is praying for a lot of rain now, not because it will help the crops (for there are no winter crops, the cabanuelas being at best too brief), but because the amount of rain that falls in the cabanuelas is thought to be proportional to the amount that will fall in “las aguas” (summer rains) on which the harvest depends. This last summer, despite the floods in Mazatlán, there was a very low rainfall in this stretch of the Sierra Madre, and the harvest was scant. The poor families, who farm small patches upon the hillsides, will once again have to sell their few chickens and pigs to the wealthy holders of the river-basin lands, in order to buy enough corn to subsist upon, and to plant next summer. Or they can borrow corn from the rich, which has to be paid back in triple the following harvest. No wonder the degree of malnutrition among. the poor is startling!

With the coming of the rains the temperature has turned abruptly cooler. It is now quite pleasant here. If I am to be stuck in Ajoya for many days longer. I shall probably have to wait here until the Wolfs arrive from the States with the other portion of my medicines on December 28th, for it seems rather pointless to make the long burro trip to Verano if I am to stay there only a day or two before starting the journey back again.

I do not mind waiting in Ajoya, however. It is a beautiful village with its closely grouped, tile-roofed, adobe cases anti its thick-walled “iglesia” which I am told dates back four or five hundred years. (The village of Ajoya -- or, more completely, Ajoya de San Jerónimo -- was first settled by the Spanish long before Mazatlán existed. Before the Spanish came, it is said to have been a “pueblo de indios.” There are still some old-timers in Ajoya who speak some Mayan, or “Mexicana,” as they call it here.) Also I have grown very fond of the villagers, who have made me feel very welcome here.

SICKNESS AND SENSE OF HUMOR

The morning after I arrived the rain continued to pour down. The muddy calle in front of the case was barren of both people and pigs. I stared at my huge cargo, mostly medicines, stacked against the back wall of the “portal” (front veranda). I felt a little ridiculous with all those cartons and boxes
piled between the calabazas and corn.

But when the storm slackened the people, remembering me from our Pacific trip the year before, began to arrive for medicines. They came like the rain itself, first a sprinkling and finally a deluge.

The vast majority of the sicknesses here are related to either poor hygiene or malnutrition, usually both; children with head lice (piojos) where dirt and scratching has caused secondary infection and sores (granos); festering ulcerations (llagas) of the skin with gaping cavities up to half an inch deep; boils (nacidos), especially on children; pelagra-like bruising (manchas) of the skin; large, suppurating, spreading unhealing sores (lepra), especially on children; rickets; mouth ulcerations (postemillas); irritating ringworm infections (jiotes), especially on children around the eyes; muscle cramps (calambre); arthritis, rheumatism, sciatica (all called reuma) sometimes beginning in children, and present to some degree in almost everyone from middle-age on; hemorrhaging, especially in women; scaly infections (tiña), probably fungal, of the face or scalp; ulcerating varicosity and tissue degeneration of the lower legs; stomach ulcers and painful hyperacidity (agruras); persistent dizziness (tarantas) and/or ringing (zumbido) of the ears; and an endless variety of aches and pains and organic disorders coupled with anemic conditions and general debility. Breastfeeding infants are typically scrawny, for the mothers of the poorer families have a scarcity of milk in their own breasts, and lack the con qué to purchase fresh or prepared milk. (The infant mortality rate is very high. Rare is the mother of a large family who has not lost one or more children, and on the average, a mother here loses one fourth to one third of her children, frequently more). Dysentery, both bacterial and amoebic, causes much suffering and takes many lives, especially of young children.

The list of ailments I have already encountered goes on and on: eye and ear infections; festering cuts (heridas) and scratches; chronic bronchitis; la gripa; rashes (ronchas); vaginal and urinary infections; etc. Of less frequent occurrence have been the stings (picaduras) of scorpion (alacrán) and centipede (ciénpies). More common are reactions to the bites of bedbugs (chinches), fleas (pulgas) and ticks (garrapatas). Plant poisoning has included a child who chewed on the bola of Jimsonweed, and a severe poison ivy-like reaction to a plant called hierba de truncha. (So called because it is used in poisoning a knife-shaped river fish called the truncha. The leaves of the plant are margined with stiff, sun-dew like bristles, each bearing at its tips tiny droplet of the oily poison.) Other injuries have included dog and rat bites, and cuts of varying severity from machete and hacha. An epidemic of mumps (here called coquetas) has now begun in Ajoya, and promises to be severe, for apparently, it has never struck Ajoya before, and isolation is impossible. Not only do entire families sleep together in a single room, but the children group in threes and fours under a single blanket, because no more blankets are had.

I have been doing my best to treat the people who come to me, but for many ailments I am frequently at a loss. I have had to turn many persons away, saying that I lack both the knowledge and equipment to make a proper analysis. For others, it is apparent that the only reasonable treatment is operation. Yesterday, I gave a father fifty pesos to take his small daughter to Mazatlán to have an enormous and rapidly growing shin tumor removed. And I have provided others likewise, but there is a limit to my funds, and none to the need. Frequently I have to make blind guesses as to the seriousness of a condition I have little or no understanding of. It is easy enough to say, “You should see a doctor.” But most of the people can no more afford the journey to Mazatlán than they can to New York. I alone have to make the decision -- for there is no one else to do it -- as to whether to provide the trip-money to this person or that. Usually, if I am not fairly certain that the need is critical I do not provide the money, for there are more than enough cases where there is little question, even to a layman like myself. At times I am forced to play the role of a blind god, whether I like it or not. My limitations are enormous, but I have got to accept them.

And how fast this supply of medicines -- which at first struck me as so huge -- is diminishing! Especially those medicines which are in greatest demand.

I can now see that I will have to get many more medicines if I am to have anywhere near enough for a year. Vitamins seem by far the most critical. I am already gently refusing them to all those who do not manifest chronic deficiencies, and am doing much consulting as to diet. (I fear, however, this is of minor import, as most of the more nutritious foods are beyond the means of the vast majority of the people. Nonetheless I am emphasizing the importance of many of the wild fruits, like guayabas, arrayanes, and the peanut-like seeds of pochote, which are now coming into season, and are free for the gathering.

The first two or-three days, I must confess were rather hectic. I arranged my medicines according to categories on the floor of the “portal” of the casa where José Vidaca lives with the family of his wife. There is not so much as a table available, and occasionally the family rooster parades across the boxes of medicines, or tips one over as he leaps with a squeak, trying to escape a pursuing child. José Vidaca and a little boy named Goyo have become my assistants, and are a great help during the periods of “rush.”

But “rush” is never quite the right word here. There is a friendly leisure about all activities which I am coming to accept and even enjoy. When meal time comes and I am called, those who are waiting seem to enjoy waiting. (Many of them, it seems, have spent their lifetime waiting.) They chat with each other or we chat together as I eat. There is always a great deal of laughter and kidding.

As for the ailments of the people, rarely are they so severe that the patient cannot joke about them himself. The people have evolved an enormous amount of patience--or better, resignation--about their infirmities. They have learned to lighten them with humor, and are rapidly teaching me to do likewise.

Sometimes, however, the leisurely approach goes too far. One evening as I was writing a boy came, apparently to chat, and we chatted. Shortly someone else came and the boy stood quietly in the background. Then I turned to him again he told me that his little sister, age 7, had just been stung in the back by a scorpion, which had crawled out of the burning firewood onto the floor where she had been lying. As we hastened up the steep hill together, I told the boy that if ever there was another such an emergency to please let me know a little more quickly... We had lost only about five minutes... but at times that can make the difference.

HOGS AND HYGIENE

Hats off to the hogs! They are sure to conquer the world. When the advanced nations have blown each other to pieces and the impoverished nations have perished in a sea of disease, it will be the pigs, fat and healthy, who survive!

What a failure are we human beings by comparison -- physically at least. How careful we have to be with our diet, with our hygiene, not to collapse with diseases.

After a day of treating the sick, when I go to the “monte” (in this case, the bushes above the river) to relieve my bowels I am impressed by the unvanquishable health of these shit-eating swine. One day when I met José returning from the river I asked if he lead been “bañando,” and he replied, no, he had been “batallando con los coches.” There could not be a more apt phrase to describe “going to the bathroom” here where there are no bathrooms. The process is always a battle. If one does not carry rocks with him to fight off the hungry hogs they are apt to knock one over where one squats, so impatient are they for their dinner! If the grown men of Ajoya carry slingshots in their pockets it is not to shoot at birds, but rather to defend themselves from the hogs when at stool. (On my first trip to México, before I had learned better, I hurried out one night in the dark, and was nuzzled in the backside by the wet snout of an over-eager pig.)

The, hogs in Ajoya perform the function formerly assigned the Harigeri or Untouchable class in India. It is hard to imagine what a stench there would be in the “alrededores” of the pueblo without this self-appointed and ceaselessly active clean-up crew. Yet when I see infants with distended bellies and worms coming out of their nostrils, or children whose stools are bloody with dysentery, while the pigs returning from “el monte” wander happily into the casas and into the cocinas, I cannot help thinking that somehow there must be a better solution.

It has not been my intention to try to change any major factors in the village life, but I have found myself making an all out campaign to construct to construct “escusados.”* So far it has done no good.

THE CASA CHAVARÍN

Although José Vidaca says “Soy muy pecador:” and he ought to know, he is one of the kindest and most generous of men I have met. When our group from Pacific High School arrived last spring, he, more than anyone else in the village, put himself out to help us, and secured for us the burro train which carried our medicines into the Sierra. This year when I arrived he at once invited me to stay in his home, refusing absolutely to accept any payment for room or board.

José, who is now about 40, lives in the casa of the parents of his 20 year old bride, Sofía. Sofia’s parents are Ramón Chavarín, now blind (with cataracts) for some 4 to 5 years, and the old but fiery Micaela Lomas de Chavarín. Also living in the thick walled adobe house are Federico (Lico), 24; Florentino (Tatino), 23; the nearly mute and “inocente” Julieta, 22; and Asención (Chon), 17. Another daughter, María, 22, sleeps with her husband and her two children, Venerando (Vene), 3, and Belén, 5 months, in a near by casa, but spends most of the day with her children at the casa Chavarín. The only remaining member of the family is the 4 month old daughter of José and Sofía, Eustolia (Toya).

Although the Familia Chavarín is far from well off, it is considerably better off than many of the families of the village: and especially of the smaller ranchos and villages surrounding Ajoya. Nevertheless the majority of meals consists of nothing more than tortillas and frijoles, and sometimes the frijoles are not even refried because at the moment no one has the “con qué” to buy manteca. And there are not enough blankets to go around without sharing, but no one seems to mind.

Now that Ramón is blind and unable to work, the family relies on the boys for its “sostenencia.” Most of the days when nothing else turns up to do they go to one or another of the small “milpas” (cornfields) in the surrounding hills, to pizcar (pick the dried corn), haul in fodder on the backs of burros, or clear new slopes for planting. The little spending money that the family has comes from what the boys earn by chopping “leña” (firewood) in the hills and hauling it on burro-back to sell in the pueblo, by fishing for “camarones” (crayfish) in the river, or by hauling oranges and “limas” from La Palma (a wealthy estate owned by Jesús [Chuy] Vega about 2 kms. up the river). The boys also supplement the diet by hunting wild game and hives of wild bees in the hills.

The entire family has welcomed me with the same enthusiasm as has José, and rather than resenting the chaos which has resulted from transforming the portal into a dispensary, seems to enjoy it. Everyone who arrives is always greeted with a friendly, “¡Pásele!” and if there is a seat to spare, offered a seat. The blind Ramón stands quietly in the corners staff in his heavy hand. He does little all day except turn the molino in the morning to grind the corn, listen acutely to everything that is going on (he rarely misses anything) and talk. Yet his life is rich with tales and anecdotes and reminiscences. He has a warm, happy laugh which is almost a giggle. Little Veni enjoys leading him around by pulling the end of his staff. (Veni, like the rooster, is not housebroken, and as I move from one box of medicines to the next I have to watch my step.) Frequently there will arrive an elderly campesino -- like 71 year old Caytano, whose trade is to castrate and remove the ovaries of hogs for fattening -- to ask for some medicine or another, but who will end up staying half the day or into the night swapping tales and chuckling with the blind Ramón. They talk of ghosts and gold, of the Revolution and of Tino Navari, who was the local Billy the Kid. My head is full of their tales.

“ESPANTOS” AND “ESPIRITUS”

The discussion of “espíritus,” “espantos” and “el diablo” began with the price of cheese, which has recently gone up in Ajoya. We were in the dark kitchen where the cooking fire, lit in the dark, took the chill out of the dawn air. Sofía was grinding masa on the stone metate while the abuela Micaela patted out tortillas in her old but strangely graceful hands. Blind Ramón, the “jefe de la familia” stood, as ever in the mornings, in the corners supported by his staff. Chón had already left for the milpa, accompanied by the dogs; Tatino had gone to the river to water the burro; but Federico and Everardo still stood around the earth covered pretíl, hands in their pockets, absorbing the heat from the “horno.”

The abuela Micaela asked the prices “para alla” (in the United States); I answered, translating the figures into pesos. Federico asked if we had pesos as well as dollars, and this started the discussion of currency. Money may be a big thing to those who have much, but it can be an even bigger thing to those who have little. How frequently conversation turns to gold and silver, to lost mines and “tesoros escondidos.” But to the poor, this money is a thing of dreams, not of reality, and is inevitably associated with spirits and ghosts and the devil.

In the days before banks were secured to store and expand the gains of “los ricos,” it was the custom to bury for safekeeping one’s gold and one’s silver. Often “el dueño” alone knew where the money was buried. Sometimes he left maps and clues as to the hiding place, but more often he died, sometimes suddenly, leaving no trace of the “dinero enterrado.” It is the dream of “los pobres” of Mexico to win a lottery or discover one of these buried treasures. The folklore is full of tales of such treasure, and of the spirits who guard them.

Looking across the river from Ajoya one sees a dark, rugged group of mountains known as “Los Viejos.” From the highest of these mountains rises a huge tooth of white rock, and on the far side of this rock is said to be an old mine, “muy rica” to which no one dares to go because ‘the mine is “encantada” - and whoever finds it dies.

The spirits of those who have buried gold now lost are said to wander through the pueblos on moonlit nights, searching for their loved ones in order to lead them to the buried money. In Ajoya the ghost of a woman has frequently been seen. Everardo once saw her sitting on the doorstep of the casa. She was dressed in black, her body invisible, so that he saw no more than her clothing and huaraches. Tatino has seen her, too, and so have many others. Sometimes she appears as a skeleton, dressed in black, at other times only her teeth are visible, huge overgrown fangs; and sometimes her long sharp fingernails.. Sometimes she tries to catch hold of people with her long nails, to lift them up and take them to the fortune. But the people always flee her, for they are afraid, She has been seen also by the river at night. But she never harms anyone.

The devil also appears at night, assuming different forms. Most frequently he assumes the form of a black dog, which suddenly grows in size and frightens people, and which enjoys, it seems, blocking narrow trails and forbidding passage. At night children, and sometimes grown-ups too, frequently return from errands unfulfilled because “el diablo” in the form of “el perro negro” was blocking the way.

One night, when old Ramón was young, he was riding past “el panteón” (cemetery) when his horse reared in fright and threw him. When he picked himself up he heard an enormous thundering, and the devil in the form of 50 black horses galloped across the graves of the dead, raising no dust.

The devil, it is said, only harms those who make a “compromiso” with him, selling their souls. The devil has unlimited gold and silver, and will make rich anyone who compromises with him, but in the end he will take his soul.

“In San Ignacio,” continued old Ramón, “there lived a man named Milán whom the devil had made rich, and who built for himself a huge three-story house on the hill above the town. “No ha visto el palacio en la loma de San Ignacio?” (Yes, I had seen it.) “Well, the devil had supplied the gold to build this, mansion, but Milán had sold his soul to the devil, and when the time came to complete the contract and turn over his soul, Milán had told in secret to San Dimas in the mountains. But he could not escape the terms, and one day his body was found, smashed upon rocky ground. The devil had caught him in the night, snatched him around the waist in his huge “uñas” and carried him high into the air. High up, the body slipped from the clutch of the devil and fell upon the rocks below, but the soul of Milán, still pinioned on the devils long nails, was carried off forever into darkness. At the time of Milán’s death, the mine through which the devil had supplied. the gold to Milan, became flooded by a brackish spring which suddenly sprang from nowhere, and a landslide of giant rocks obscured the entrance.

The conversation burned to ways of finding hidden treasures It was pointed out that at certain times of year the air immediately above buried gold “se alumbra” or bursts into flame. Nearly everyone in the village has seen these “llamas” in the hills. I asked if these flames were seen only in the rainy season. “Sí, al comienzo de las aguas,” replied Lico. Cuando habían las nubes grandes y negras sobre los cerros altos.” The flames from buried gold, said old Ramón, would shoot up three times before they disappeared. 1 asked if the flames burned the vegetation. No, was the answer. They were cold.

LA RAMONA

This morning as I returned from the west side of town, having purchased a can of talco for the very raw bottom of a baby with severe diarrhea, I passed the small shop of Gregorio Alarcón Federico who hailed me to share with me a “pan de huevo” he had just purchased. As ever, a chair was at once brought for me, and although I had many “enfermos” awaiting me, I found myself sitting and chatting with the owner of the shop and several of the vagrant young men who always appear wherever a conversation starts. Gregorio Alarcón) the rotund and aging shopkeeper, prides himself on his English, which is negligible. He taught himself from a book many nears ago and still remembers a miscellaneous collection of unrelated words. As we talked I noticed a dark, healthy girl of perhaps 18 years in the shadows behind the counter. Someone asked how to say “Ramona” in English and so it was I learned the name of Gregorio’s grand-daughter. Federico grinned and said that Ramona had offered to give me lessons in Spanish if I would give her lessons in English. Then he gave me a lascivious wink. I said I would be glad to teach her some English, and was always eager to improve my Spanish.

After a few more minutes “platicando” I took my leave and walked on down the wet stony street toward the casa of José Vidaca. (As I walked, I heard someone behind me saying, “Mira, el tiene parálisis en sus pies también.”) About half an hour later a small boy appeared at the veranda of the casa of José Vidaca bearing a snowy white rooster upside-down, by the legs. He handed it to me, saying, “Es de Ramona” And so our friendship has begun.

EL MUDO

Chon, el Mudo, lives in a world without sound. He has been deaf since birth, and lacking the power of hearing, his other senses have grown keen. When he looks at me with his deep-set eyes I feel that he is reaching inside of me, feeling with the fingertips of some secret “vision” the very contours of my soul. I am grateful that I pass his inspection and that he accepts me as a friend.

The degree to which Chón the Mute manages to communicate without hearing or speaking is extraordinary. His manner of expression is beautiful. He is tall and slender and his arms are long and thin. His large dark hands he moves with the grace of a dancer. He expresses himself with his hands, his arms, his face, his entire body, the gestures of the one leading and flowing into the motion of the other. With no other teacher than necessity, he has evolved an art of pantomime parallel to that of Marcel Marceau. He is a marvel to watch.

Yet pantomime is an art more or less native to the village of Ajoya. Where other people would “hablar en secreto”, the villagers frequently express themselves with gestures. For instance, when Everardo, the playboy and clown of the Familia Chavarín, inquired of me whether I would supply him with aphrodisiacs, he used no words at all, and yet it was imminently obvious what he was talking about, and the effect he desired from the girl he sought to seduce. Similarly when he asked me to bring opium down to him from the mountain, his gestures portraying the opium and procedure of opening the poppy head were dexterous and precise, almost ritualistic, with a wild grin on his face. One afternoon when Everardo motioned for me to follow him into a back room of the casa, making strange and covetous gestures, I had no idea what was in store, but it was to show me some rocks from a secret vein in the cliff he had discovered, and (because most Americans who put a foot into the Sierra Madre are miners) he wanted my advice as to whether his stones were gold bearing, I told him I had no clue.

When “talking” with Chón the Mute, the villagers automatically fall into a sort of sign language, throwing in an unheard word here and there for emphasis, and almost any subject matter seems to be quickly and simply communicated. I found myself talking with Chón in the same way.

Chón has taught himself to read and to write. He is obviously very bright, and has not wasted his mind of superficial chatter. The family he comes from is the poorest of poor and Chón earns his living making “jaulas” or birdcages and “trampas” or traps for rats, from logs which he splits and from sticks. He also makes handsome children’s toys out of wood, carving the pieces with his long, agile fingers. In addition he makes “hamacas” (webbed hammocks) by carefully knotting string.

Chón loves animals. When he first saw a pet squirrel of Ramona’s he fell in love with it. (Ramona told me this tale with some irritation.) Chón asked Ramona if he could borrow the squirrel for a couple of days. Ramona lent it to him, but Chón refused to return it, and when Ramona asked for it back, Chón insisted that it was his now and that he had paid her 10 pesos for it. (He had previously offered her 10 pesos but Ramona, also fond of the squirrel, had refused to sell it.) Chón even went so far as to take Ramona before the “síndico” (Ejidal police) about the squirrel, and when finally the decision was made in her favor, Chón wept like a little boy, not for losing the contest, but over losing the squirrel.

NO HABLAMOS

Today on the way to the river as I passed by the casa behind that of José Vidaca, a stumpy little boy with bright agate eyes called to me, “Gringo, Gringo,” followed by some words I could not make out. I nodded and shrugged and continued on my way to the river. Returning, as I passed the same casa, the little boy called to me again, running his words together, but this time I understood, “Gringo, Gringo, no tiene nada para catarro?”
“¿Para quien?” I asked.

“Para mi,” he replied.

“Pués, vamos a hablar con tu mamá,” I replied, and he led me through the gate and into the casa.

“Buenas tardes. Pásele,” said the mother, bringing a chair, “Siéntese.”

“¿Es que su hijo tiene catarro?” I asked.

“Ay, muy mal catarro,” replied the mother. She also pointed out the “boquilla” (open sore by the mouth) and “llagas” (sores) on the legs of the infant. I told her I had medicines for these, too, and stressed the importance of eating fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, and the like, in short all those foods that were difficult to come by and the family could scarcely afford. The mother asked me next if I had anything for “lombrizes,” and told me sometimes this same little boy evacuated giant round worms “como así,” and she held her hands more than a foot apart, indicating the length. Now the worms were not as bad as they had been, she said, when the child’s body had wasted away while his paunch had become distended with the bulk of hungry worms. Not only had he passed the giant worms in his excreta, they had emerged from his nose and mouth as well.

I told the mother that I had medicine for worms as well, and if she would step around the corner with me to the casa of José Vidaca I would give them to her. She hesitated, and then said, “Es que nosotros no vamos alla.” I could not resist asking “por qué” but got no more answer than, “Estamos enojados con ellos. No hablamos.” I told her I would bring the medicine.

Similarly I encountered another family, living not far from the house of José Vidaca who wanted medicines but were “annoyed” with the Vidaca household and refused to go there, even to pick up medicines. When I asked why they mentioned something about one of the girls there striking one of their children, but the annoyance seemed more deep-seated than that.

Back at the household, I asked about this annoyance between the families but could get no more specific responses than, “Es que hay gente que le gusta pelear” or simply “Son tontos” or “locos.” I asked how long these annoyances had been doing on.

“Hace años.”

“And how long were they apt to continue?”

“Años...”

But never could I obtain any specific reasons for the annoyances. I think they have long since been forgotten.
Perhaps the, old abuelo is right, “Es que hay gente que le gusta pelear.”*

Sofía told me that “la mujer” of one of the families which is annoyed was spreading the word in the village that “Las medicinas del Gringo son malas. La gente que las toman van a morir. “

But until someone dies - and it can happen (sooner or later it is inevitable) - I am not worried. The people still greet me with welcome as I walk down the street, they still call me onto their verandas to give me a couple of eggs, or a handful of peanuts, or a piece of cheese, or a “lima.” They still send their children with a plateful of “cochetas” or of “buñuelos.” And where there are mumps, or fever, or boils, or mouth ulcers, or arthritis, or dysentery, or hemorrhages, or cuts, or pelagra, or ricketts, or epilepsy, or stuffy noses etc. etc., they still come if they can, or send a child to fetch me.

LA TERESA

This morning I walked as usual to the casa of “la Teresa.” Teresa is a woman in her mid-thirties, with four children and another on the way. At one time Teresa was so fat that she “startled the people,” but now, since her illness, she has become nothing but skin and bone. For three years she has been suffering from chronic bronchial asthma, and has gradually wasted away. Unlike most of the sick in Ajoya, there is no joy left in her. Every time I call on her she says, “Diós sabe si yo muera,” and I have heard it said by the neighbors that she wants to die. I think there is something of her that wants to die, but that there is also something that wants desperately to live, not only for her children but also for herself.

I have tried one medicine after another, and together: bronchial constrictors, antihistamine, antibiotics, vitamins. For a While she seems to be improving, I think, as much from my interest as from my medicines, but after a few days she relapses. When I come she sits on her cot in front of the one room adobe casa and tells me how she has fared. Sometimes she coughs little, and sometimes she coughs frequently, almost gagging on the phlegm, which she spits into a rusted pan of dirt beside the bed. Today while we were talking, her two-year old daughter soiled her panties outside the gate and promptly shed them. An enormous hog, on the spot to take advantage of the meal, in an instant was chewing on the loaded panties, with its moist snout. Teresa, noticing what was happening, sprang to her feet and chased the hog, which bumbled down the trail bearing the panties. I threw a rock, and the pig dropped the panties, which I quickly recovered. But the sudden excitement threw the poor Teresa into a coughing fit such as I had not seen before, and it was many minutes before she recovered, and sat droopily on the edge of the cot panting for breath.

Teresa then proceeded to tell me of her trials. Three year she has suffered with this illness. Last spring she was taken by her mother to Culiacán and spent some three months in the state hospital, presumably at state expense. There she had seemed to recover fairly well, but had fallen ill again almost as soon as she left. A state doctor had provided her with medicines for a while, gratis, and these seemed to help, but when she failed to respond sufficiently the doctor gave her up, and refused to give her any more. The summer rainy season had put her in very bad stead, and with whatever money she could get hold of she had purchased medicines, mostly injections of vitamins, which did little good. She said that when she was in Mazatlán and eating meat she had been stronger, but that in Ajoya meat was, of course, seldom available, and costly. I asked her if she drank milk, and she said yes, that her mother brought her some most every day, at considerable sacrifice, and that sometimes she herself bought meat and other nutritious foods, but that on 10 pesos a day, which was what her husband earns working in “el campo,” and with four children to feed, they could not afford very much. Furthermore, work in “el campo” was available regularly only in “las aguas.” (The price of milk is 2 pesos a litre. Beef is 6 to 8 pesos a kilo, lard is 10 pesos a kilo. Medicines are exorbitant. For a bottle of thirty high-potency vitamin capsules Teresa paid 42 pesos. Antibiotics are even more expensive, and injectable medicines more yet.)

The problem in Ajoya, unlike in the more remote villages, is not that medicines are unavailable but that (1) medicines are so expensive relative to the daily wage that for the majority adequate medication is an impossibility, just as is adequate nutrition, and (2) there is incredibly little discretion in the use of medicines. Any medicine, from the most innocuous to the most dangerous, is available over the counter. Dr. Osio, the village quack, vends, as nearly as I can make out, the most costly medicines possible for whatever provocation A myth has spread in epidemic fashion through Ajoya that injected medicine is necessarily far more effective than medicine taken orally. Dr. Osio sells injectable vitamins at 22 pesos a-shot. La Teresa bought enough for three shots for 66 pesos (she could have purchased a month supply of capsules for the same amount) and after she had purchased and paid for them, Dr. Osio did not show up to inject them, and the vitamins, as they were in solution and could not be kept cold, have probably deteriorated.

FOLK FEARS, FOLK CURES

I am wary of anyone who comes to me asking for a specific medicine, rather than to relate their symptoms. Today a woman came insisting that I give her some penicillin tablets. I asked for what, and she replied for “dolor de cabeza.” I told her that penicillin was not a pain killer, but the old woman would settle for nothing short of penicillin -- so she had to settle for nothing. (I thought of giving her aspirin and calling it penicillin. I am sure it would have done her more good than aspirin alone. But I decided against it.)

Another complication in Ajoya is folklore. I am convinced that many of the local cures and medicinal plants, of which there are hundreds, are of value. But there are also myths which definitely impair health rather than enhance it. For example, it is a common belief that citric fruits are extremely bad for the common cold, and for other ailments, for which Vitamin C would be of great benefit. Now that cold weather has set in after the winter rains, and the river is high for crossing, sniffles and colds and coughs are rampant in the village. This is the season when oranges and other citric fruit are available in great number. Everyday there are men and children passing through the streets, vending oranges at 10 centavos (less than a penny) a piece. One of the biggest health campaigns I have at present is to combat the anti-orange myth. It took me half an hour of constant persuasion to talk a boys mother into letting him have “limas” when he was febril with the mumps and begging for them, Now the boy is one of my chief protagonists in the campaign, telling all his friends as one by one they come down with the mumps, that “limas y naranjas” cured him of the mumps. This is not strictly true, but it does help to counteract the popular myth.

There are other popular cures which are far from hygienic. For snake bite one of the recommended cures is to place still warm cow manure over the bite. This is supposed to draw the poison, and perhaps it does, but as infection is one of the frequent complications of snake bite, I cannot but believe that there might be safer cures, such as, for example, damp tobacco leaves; which are also recommended. (I first heard of this latter cure in El Naranjo, from an elderly gentleman who swore that he had applied it to a youth recently bit by a “víbora de cascabel” and that the bite cured with no swelling or reaction whatever. I asked if he himself had seen the snake and he said no. There are many species of non-venomous snakes which, vibrating their tails in dry leaves simulate the sound of a rattlesnake, thus frightening their enemies. I suspect the cure was so effective because the “víbora de cascabel” which bit the boy was in reality of a non-poisonous species.)

For a broken arm the use or human feces is advocated. Caytano Fonseca, now 71 years old, relates of the time he fell from his mule as a bay and broke his right arm above the wrist, so that his hand flapped back against his elbow. His father treated it by stewing human excreta (“mierda de hombre, de mujer de nine, cualquiera qua haya”) together with the leaves of a plant called Cimbriadora until a paste was formed which was then applied to the broken arm. The arm was placed between two “tablas de madera” carved with a machete from pieces of wood and bound firm, and in two weeks it was completely cured.

I do not know whether human feces were used to treat my little friend Goya when he fell from the Guamuchil and broke his arm, but certainly the infection which finally led to the loss of the arm was rapid and severe.

MANUEL

In the afternoon as I returned from “batallando con los coches” among the undergrowth which grows atop the cliff above the river, I passed a young man, built like a short bull and of no great intelligence, on his wag in the direction from which I had come. With the hesitance and awe with which a monk approaches his god or a little boy approaches a policeman, he made a motion for me to stop. His eyes were wide and looked frightened. With a strong chunky finger he pointed to the side of his throat.
“Mire,” he said.

I looked, but didn’t see anything. “No veo nada,” I replied,

“No, nada,” said the young man with a tremulous half-smile. Then I remembered. Three days before, among the crowd of people who had come for medicine and treatment, had come this young man, complaining of an infected ear. I could not but notice his neck, swollen to half again its normal size on one side, and asked him if he would not like something to try to cure his “buchi” (goiter) also. He looked at me as if I had suggested he sprout wings, but after considerable coaxing and reassurance from members of the household he took the “pastillas de yodo” along with an antibiotic for the infected glands, and departed. Now three days later, there is no visible trace of the large goiter. No wonder he suspected me of magic. I am a little awed myself.*

HEX MARKS THE SPOT

Today as we passed a house opposite the Plazuela, Goyo said to me, “Aquí vive la mujer que fue golpeada.” We went in, and I found there an old woman I had already been treating. For nearly a year since she was beaten she has lain huddles on a cot, suffering from broken bones that have healed out of place and from internal injuries that pain her constantly. But the ailment I have been treating her for at present is a persistent diarrhea, perhaps related to the injuries, which has gradually robbed her of all strength and flesh, until now her skin is stretched tightly over her gnarled bones.

Until today I had not known who had beaten the old woman, or why, and had been told simply, “le golpearon.” (They beat her.) However, we were invited to lunch at the casa of Jesús Vega, having that same morning patched up the head of his young son who had fallen from a mule. I asked Jesús about the beating.

“Es un asunto de brujería,” he began. Nearly a year ago a woman in a neighboring house had fallen -ill, and. as no explanation for the illness could be found, the family decided that the old woman and her daughters had worked an “echiza” (hex) against her, or given her the evil eye (“mal de ojo”). Four men of the family entered the house in the middle of the night, dragged the old mother and her two middle-aged daughters out into the dark, and “les pegaron” -- beat them with their fist., with kicks, and with the flat of a machete. The two daughters eventually recovered, but the old mother will doubtless die of the injuries. If she were younger I would send her to Mazatlán for treatment.

I asked if the men were .punished. Well, yes, two of the four were taken to San Ignacio where they spent “diez o-quince días en la cárcel.”

Here there is much talk of witchcraft. But Adrián’s mother tells me that “por la Sierra,” especially in Verano, there is much more “brujería” than here. She relates of a time she was talking with an old woman who, as the sun set, floated into the air and flew to a distant hilltop. She says that such things frighten her.

Two days ago Rafael Ramírez, whose son Sixto I had taken to Mazatlán to treat the infected dog-bite, came to Ajoya from Carrisál to beg for money to bury “el ciego,” Marcelino Cristina, in the “panteón.” Marcelino was already little more than a ghost when I had first seen him the evening I went to cure Rafael’s son. Bones covered by dark skin, his grey hair and beard having been cut for the last time years ago, he squatted on his haunches as motionless as a totem in front of the small hut, his boney arms clasped stoically about his knees. At night he sleeps on a small platform out of doors elevated about four feet above the ground. He coughed an asthmatic cough much of the night and I had brought him a medicine to calm it.

Marcelino was born blind, but had learned to make his way along the trails without eyes, and as a man had planted and harvested his own “milpa” a kilometer or more from where he lived. He had never married, and as he grew older lived with his sister only. A year and a half ago his sister was said to have committed a “postizo” (witchcraft) against a member of the village, and was dragged from her house and beaten to death, leaving the blind and aged Marcelino alone. But “E1 Síndico” took no action against the offenders who paid him off. Rafael Ramírez, although not related to Marcelino, took the blind man into his home out of compassion, and there he lived until he died. Now Rafael is raising the money to bury the old man in the “panteón” outside Ajoya. It costs about 100 pesos.

Ironically enough, at the very time I have been writing this, I have been confronted by another incidence of witchcraft, this time closer to “home.” A short while ago I was interrupted by a call to come quickly to the casa Chavarín where a man was bleeding severely from a machete cut. The cut proved less severe than I expected, and was quickly cared for. However, while I was at the casa, the old Micaela called me aside and said she wanted me to talk with her daughter Sofia, wife of José Vidaca, about a skin condition she had. We went together into the yard behind the house, where, lowering her voice, Micaela proceeded to tell me that she suspected that Sofía’s illness was due to hexing. Furthermore she knew who was responsible... an old woman by the name of Cecilia Torres who lives in the casa next to “la profesora” of the school. According to Micaela she is well known for her witchcraft. “¡Ya ella mató a mucha gente!” She had already hexed to death two relatives of her Ramón. Furthermore, she had a strong motive, for she was a cousin of the woman with whom José Vidaca had lived for many years in Verano, and with whom he had seeded children, and finally abandoned to marry Micaela’s daughter Sofia. The profesora -- of all people --had told Micaela of the old woman’s “echizas” -- how she went at midnight to the “panteón” to gather earth from the graves of the dead, which she carried again to her house and molded into “monos” resembling those she wished to hex, how she would light four candles at the four corners of her bed and lying there in the candle light cast her magic... Furthermore, continued Micaela, her son Chón had been in her house and seen the “monos,” dressed in clothes of colored cloth.

Micaela said she was telling me this now while José was away, because José refused to give the matter heed, saying it was nonsense, (Micaela said this as if it were José who was mis-educated.) The blind Ramón also thought it was nonsense, but Micaela was quite sure, and poor Sofia, reared on her mother’s tales, was inclined to agree.

As for the old Cecilia , I, too, have been in her house. I have treated her and her children and her children’s children for a variety of simple illnesses, And the old lady, in turn, has invited me to meals and has frequently given me eggs or a cup of “atole” when I have come to the house. She is old and she is wrinkled, but she is kindly, and no more of a witch than is the old Micaela.

. . . perhaps less.

Micaela told me that the last time I went to Mazatlán she had wanted me to take Sofía with her, so that she could go to a ‘curandero’ there in order to “cure the hex, however, that José had forbid it. Now she had hopes of sending her along, first to a “curandero” and then, if the cure proved unsuccessful, for a blood test. She said she hoped if the doctor gave her a “receta” for medicines I could supply them. I assured her I would if possible. Ins to her insistence of witchcraft, I said very little. There seemed little point.

ADRIÁN

In the night as we were unfolding the beds to prepare for sleep the message was brought by a tall, thin man that a child was ill on the hilltop, in the casa of Candelario. Federico offered to guide me there, and we set off together, following a rocky trail which led between the casas and up the side of the hill behind the village. The mother, a stout, large-breasted woman met us at the door and ushered us to the bedside of her son, a boy of 16, small and young-looking for his age. The sides of the boy’s face and beneath his jaw were swollen, and covered with a bandana which was tied at the back of his head. I put my hand against his brow and it felt hot. This condition with the swelling behind the ears was described as “coquetas.” I thought it might be mumps, but I had already encountered a variety of ‘hinchadas’ or swellings and facial infections, and was not sure. I went back down the hill and returned with a thermometer. The boy’s temperature was 104º. I gave him aspirin to help reduce the fever, and Vitamin C for good measure. I waited for awhile after giving the aspirin to see if the temperature would drop, All the while the mother hovered about the boy like a moth, full of worry. At last she stopped long enough to pour out the tale of how, three months before, her eight-year old daughter had fallen ill with a similar high fever. At first she had attempted to nurse the child with natural remedies, and then had called on “Doctor Oseo” -- actually not a trained doctor at all but the closest thing that the village has. The doctor, she said, prescribed one costly medicine after another, and charged exorbitantly for every visit and every injection. The family had to beg, barrow, and sell their animals to pay for the treatment. In the end the child died.

The mother began to weep as she enumerated the ways in which “Doctor Oseo” took advantage of the poor people in their infirmity, and swore before Christ that she would never patronize him again.

A half hour or more had elapsed since I had given Adrián the aspirin. I took his. temperature again, and-it had already dropped to 103, The frightened mother was enormously relieved. Adrián had been ill already for a days, and she was terrified that she night lose another child. I was deeply moved, overawed, by the intensity and immensity of her feeling.

The following morning I went to see Adrián again, and was delighted to find, on taking his temperature, that during the night it had dropped to normal. His mother, too, was delighted, but in spite all the evidence of improvement continued to worry and fret that he might have a relapse. That evening, in fact, Adrián did have a relapse, and I was sent for again. This time his temperature had soared to almost 105º. His head ached, his stomach ached, and although the swelling beneath his ears and jaw was mostly gone, a new, acute pain and swelling had developed on his right side roughly in the position of the appendix.

I thought it unlikely that the boy had appendicitis but all ,the same, I put him on Tetracycline. The mother had somehow obtained an injectable solution of “Dicryticina,” a combination of Penicillin and Streptomycin, which she was bent on having me inject. I did not look forward to injecting, particularly in such unsterile conditions as a village casa the night before, the mother explained, a rat had fallen from the roof onto the boy’s face) but the mother was near hysterics in her concern, and the evident faith in the healing power of the needle seemed to be so great that I finally decided to inject, if only for the psychological benefit. It seemed to work. We sterilized the needle and syringe by boiling and no sooner had I injected than Adrián broke into a sweat. In a few minutes his fever had dropped to 103.

The next morning Adrián’s temperature was still about 103º, and that evening it rose again to over 104º and the pain in his abdomen was worse. I gave him another injection of Dicryticin. Adrián’s temperature again began to drop. He had not eaten since the day before, although he had drunk much water. he developed a passionate craving for “limas,” and it was all I could do to convince his mother that this was precisely whet he should have. Finally she sent her younger son out to get some, and Adrián consumed the sweet fruit with a relish.

It was another two days before Adrián’s temperature finally dropped to normal and stayed there. His infirmity, which I am sure a physician would have realized from the first, was a classical acute case of mumps. The virus had traveled from one to the other of his glands: from the salivary glands it went apparently to the pancreas and finally to the intestines, which enlarged to some three times their normal size. Also affected were his eyes and C.N.S.

Adrián ‘s case was one of the early incidents of the mumps which at present are striking nearly every family in Ajoya. Everywhere one goes, one sees persons, especially children, but grownups as well, with bulldog jaws swaddled With panuelas holding compresses of “colomo” leaves, an aram lily which grows wild in the moist ravines. So far, thank heaven, few people have been afflicted with high temperature, and I have been doing little more than prescribing bed (a recommendation seldom heeded, and dealing out salicylates. There would be little point in suggesting quarantine. Most of the houses have no more than one or two rooms, and the children have to sleep together anyway for lack of blankets.

I am not sure I would make a good doctor. I tend to become too emotionally concerned about my patients. With Adrián for example, in the process of seeing him through his illness, my very mood seemed to vacillate with the highs and lows of his temperature. His recovery became a matter of dire importance and concern to me. I began to fear for him and to love him even as his mother does. The link I felt with him was that strong feeling which Walt Whitman conveyed toward the wounded and dying whom he attended in the hospitals during the war. A fearful compassion.

Both Adrián‘s mother and father were enormously grateful to me for my services, and one evening, in trying to express their gratitude, they said they wished they were wealthy so that they ‘could repay me, but that they didn’t possess anything of value... except children.

“De estos tenemos muchos,” said the father, Candelario. “Le regalamos uno para llevar consigo,” and laughing, he pointed to his son, Adrián , “Le regalamos esto, cuando se alivia.”

“Que bueno.” I said, and at the moment could not have thought of any riches I might have preferred.

Now Adrián is well, and stronger again with the vitamins Yesterday we went out over the hill to the ravine which leads toward Naranjo, to photograph birds. He explained to me the names of different plants and birds, and led me to a secret guayaba tree he knew of, but the fruit were still green.

ONLY LOVE

A mother came to me yesterday with a child, one year olds “What looked like an emaciated 3-month old baby. The limbs were tiny and fleshless, the belly distended. The scalp of the child had a condition which I have now seen a score of times, called “lepra” by the villagers -- large, oozing, itching, unhealing sores. This condition, less aggravated, extended onto the child’s back. The silent, moodless child stared at me with enormous dark eyes ringed with crystallized pus. The mother’s complaint was that the child refused to eat.

“Won’t she even drink milk?” I asked.

“Si,” replied the mother, “pués leche no hay.”

She said it as if it were a god-given, unalterable fact.

“Pero ahora sí hay,” I said, and filled with fortified powdered milk a large coffee can with a plastic top. It was one of the cans which the spring before we had given away as a first aid kit, and which, its contents having been long since used a boy had returned to see if he could get a replacement...

I gave the milk to the mother, with instructions, and gave her also a supply of chewable children’s vitamins. I dusted an antibiotic powder on the child’s scalp, put an ointment on her back, and told the mother I would come soon to check on the child’s progress.*

Something strange happened to me as I was treating the child. I asked myself, why? Why was I treating it... a child so miserable, so impoverished, so near the easy door of death? Was I doing it a service or a disservice? What life lay ahead of it? What suffering? What illness? And, finally, what death?

The mother, who had dismantled the child to show it to me, carefully rewrapped it, and folded her shawl around it in the cradle of her arm. Then she picked up the milk, the vitamins, and the ointment .I had given her, and stood before me a moment, a hope on her face, and an embarrassment, not knowing how to thank me. -

“Gracias,” she said, “que Diós le page.” “Por nada,” I said, and she left.

It was clear to me then why the child should be treated, and why it was right to do so. It was the mother’s concern, her love, that justified the child’s life. It was not just any child, miserable and sick with a hard life ahead of it if it survived. It was a specific child, loved by a specific mother, and for this it deserved to live. It was love only that justified that child’s life. Unloved it might as well have died. Love can be cruel, possessive, unreasonable, but it cannot be denied. It is as real and as desperate in its demands as life itself. Perhaps love is the only justification any life has, or needs.

JULIA

I do not know what is wrong with Julia, but I love what is right. Julia is what the people call “inocente.” Her speech is restricted to the vague sounds of a deaf-mute, although her hearing seems intact. She has more than twenty years behind her yet has all the sweetness of a little girl: all the sweetness and none of the meanness. She likes to hold Sofía’s baby in her arms and rock it back and forth, life a child with a doll. In the morning she carries water from the river on top of her head, like her sisters, but she is not strong; sometimes she fills the bucket too full, and her aging mother, Micaela, has to help her. As the sun rises she frequently takes the broom mode of long willowy sticks tied together at one end, and sweeps clean the dirt calle in front of the casa. When the villagers come for medicines she stands in the background, watching intently as I prepare and give them remedies or treat the injured. When I glance at her she always smiles, bashfully but happily, and I smile back. She is simple and homely. I have never seen her angry or resentful. I don’t think she is capable of hate, but I am convinced she is capable of love. I don’t know if she loves everyone -- I think not -- but I feel that she loves me: with the open, complete and bashful love of a child for her hero. To her I am the epitome of what is good and right, and when I frown she frowns and when I laugh she throws back her head and laughs also. Her image of me is surely innocent and naïve, but the last thing in the world I would wish would be to shatter it.

DEATH OF A CHILD

Yesterday a small girl met me at the calle and asked me to follow her to her house, which was near the river an the west end of town. I was ushered into a dark room where a number of figures stood silently around a cot on which sat a young woman, a white cloth bound tightly around her head, and in her arms a tiny baby wrapped in pieces of cloth. The shutters of the single window were opened partway to allow enough light to see. The baby had a high fever, and had not urinated for more than 24 hours, nor had it taken its mother’s milk. Earlier it had had diarrhea, first yellow, and then green. It had been born with a congested condition,, and for this the family had acquired from Dr. Oseo a variety of antibiotics, including chloromycetin. The fever had commenced some 24 hours after the injection of these drugs.

I did not know what to do. I returned to the Casa Chavarín and hunted through my manual of pediatrics and the Mercke Manual but still I lacked both the equipment and knowledge for sensible treatment. I was afraid to give more antibiotics for fear the child was already suffering from “drug fever” or the like. Yet for all I knew a high dose of antibiotics might be what was required to save the infant’s life. One thing was probably imperative, and this I had no means of providing: intravenous feeding. On the off chance that the failure to urinate and fever were associated with heat exhaustion I prescribed a small quantity of electrolytic salts, together with a very small dosage of salicylic acid to lower the temperature, and pediatric vitamins.

As I left the house I was again caught by that uneasy feeling of questioning the value of life itself. This baby is so small, so sick, so soulless and still. It is far from beautiful to my eyes at least. My sympathies are more quickly aroused for a dog, or a squirrel, or a bird than for such an incompletely formed creature that has never lived, nor loved, nor known fear. As for its need in the large world, there is none. One more mouth to feed in a land already teaming with malnourished children.

But there is a need, an instinctive need, on the part of the mother and the family to keep this helpless creature alive. The mother and the family have lived and have loved and have known fear; and it is for them that the child must be saved.

I learned from the family of Ramona that the mother so far has no living children, and that already she has lost two, with similar illness, in the first week or so of life. That the child live was of great importance, not only for personal reasons, but for social as well, for in Spanish countries a woman’s self-worth is in great part measured by her ability to bear and rear children. To be without children is to be abandoned by God.

But God, if there is one, abandoned her. In the night I was awakened from a dream of love-making by the howling of a dog... a high, painful wail, and I knew. In the morning, before the sun had risen the news came. I have still not gone to the house to make lamentations, and I don’t know if I shall go. I wonder what I could or should have done. I wish I knew more...

TWO BOYS, TWO HANDS

In spite of the fact that Ajoya is technically an Ejido (government-sponsored cooperative village), a tremendous amount of inequality remains. As in the days of feudalism there are still the few “haves” and the many “have-nots”. One can frequently estimate the relative wealth of a citizen of Ajoya by the measurement, of his girth. The “haves” are overweight, the have-nots” underfed. While the “have-nots” suffer the hundred plagues of malnutritions the “haves” -- like Jesus Vega, the wealthiest landowner in town -- suffer from obesity, alcoholism, and resultant heart trouble. One can guess which type of family a child comes from by the rate at which he recovers from an injury. Nutritional deficiencies make infected, and even non-infected injuries difficult and slow to heal.

For example, one very thin, pale little boy, named José María, mashed and lacerated the tip of his finger 8 days ago (3 days after I arrived) but in spite of the fact that I cleansed, sterilized and bandaged it carefully, an infection began. I applied topical antibiotic and crave him additional oral antibiotics and daily vitamin supplement, Today, when I re-bandaged the finger there was no more sign or infection. But there was also little sign of healing. At the rate it is curing, it will be a month before the finger can be finally un-bandaged.

By comparison, the day after José María damaged his finger, Ramiro Lomas, a larger, chubbier and better fed boy from one of the more prosperous cattle and land owning families of the village, came to me with a badly lacerated hand. That morning the burro he was riding had bolted, and Ramiro, attempting to hang on, had closed his hand around the blade of his machete. The cut extended from the top side of the thumb, where it all but removed a large slab of skin and flesh, around and between the thumb and fingers and into the palm of the hand. Fortunately, no tendons had been severed. Several hours had passed since the injury, and the flap of flesh over the thumb had already turned grey and begun to shrivel. I thought it advisable to inject with xylocain before cutting away the flap. (The first injection I gave in Ajoya had been to a mule that same morning, and I was glad for the practice.) I injected in several places, excised the flap, and patched together the cut, using butterfly bandages rather than sutures. After applying antibiotic ointment I bandaged the hand firmly and put it in a sling. Five days later the deep cut had already knitted cleanly, and the decapitated section had gone a long way toward curing. Another two or three days and we will be able to remove the bandage altogether.

I can’t help wondering how much the difference in time of healing relates to the difference of the nutritional state of the two boys.

I have charged not one centavo for the various medicines or first aid treatment I have given in Ajoya. Yet I have not gone without reward. The biggest reward is the people’s response, their welcome, their acceptance of me. Constantly their appreciation is expressed in their salutations and their gifts. A boy brings me a cup of “arrajada de chiva” (goats cheese); Caytano’s wife calls me into her house and gives me some freshly made “requesón” (salt-cheese) and a cup of “chocomil.” A young man comes shortly after dawn with freshly roasted venado (venison) from a deer he shot on ‘el cerro’ the day before. A little girl stumbles through the rain with a bowl of freshly popped popcorn.

Now, as I am writing here, an old man approaches from behind as I sit at my typewriter, and watches silently until I pause, touches his rheumatic knee and smiling a toothless smile says, “Ya me alivia mucho.” Then he reaches into a bucket containing three oranges and hands me the fattest. “Yo me guardé ésta para usted.”

And again this afternoon, as I pass the house of José el Cazadór, he calls me in, his wife gives me a seat, and places a saucer full of freshly roasted chunks of meat, “¿A ver si le gusta?”

I ask what kind of meat it is, but, he says again, grinning, “¿A ver si le gusta?” I try it and assure him it is delicious.
(In fact, it was one of the best meats I have ever eaten.) “¿Pero qué es?” I ask again, and he replies, “Es solitario” -which tells me nothing. (So far I have learned of “el solitario” only as the giant tape-worm, which afflicts some of the children in the village.) From José’s description it appears this “solitario” is some sort of groundhog or marmot, with large incisors, living among the rocks high in “el Monte.”

Every day there are gifts such as these. They are never given as pay, or with a sense of debt. Rather the gifts are given as tokens, as symbols of their welcome and appreciation; I do not know much of what is said behind my back. I am sure I must seem a strange kettle of pescado to many in the village. I don’t dance, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, not even coffee, I stumble sometimes walking over the rocks, I frequently bathe in the river in the middle of the night, I don’t wear a sombrero except to protect my head from the rain or from the sun, I don’t even shave every week or two like everyone else. And most un-accountable of all, I give away medicines free. But I am sure all these aberrations the people account for my being a Gringo, and forgive.

MISTAKES

The people as a whole seem to place great trust in powers as a medicine man, and I have to say again and again to remind them that I am no a qualified doctor and that my knowledge of medicine is greatly limited. But they seem to put dawn such statements as modesty. Already some of the medicines have had some spectacular results, and this tends to confirm the people’s faith.

I have, however, also made some blunders, none of them, so far, thankfully irredeemable.

My first “goof” (that I know of)” was semantic in origin. I gave a young man Sal Hepática for a stuffy nose. He came complaining of “constipado” and a bad headache. I fished out a small jar of Sat Hepática from my laxative box, and in somewhat uncertain Spanish explained the dosage and effect. As he listened his eyes became wider and wider, especially when I told him that if he didn’t have a bowel movement within half an hour after taking the Sal Hepática he should take a second tablespoonful. He kept insisting that he had no other ailment than “constipado” and “mal de cabeza” and I kept assuring him that his “mal de cabeza” was in all probability a result of his “constipado” and that, with the sure, gentle action of Sal Hepática both symptoms would find swift relief. He remained wide-eyed and
amazed, but at last I got him to assure me he would take the medicine...

I have not seen the young man since, but it was reported to me that he had been plagued by a sudden attack of diarrhea. However, as the cases of diarrhea in Ajoya are so numerous, we shall attribute the attack to natural causes.

My second error in treatment proved to be of far more serious nature than the first, and I regret it much. One day Chón, the deaf-mute came to call me to see his mother, María, who was evidently in great pain. I found the old lady lying on a cot and moaning with pain. She had a fever, and said she had been suffering this way for more than a week. She complained of pain in urinating. I returned with tablets of “azogantanol”, a sulfonamide designed especially for urino-genital infections which I gave her according to the dosage in the P.D.R. The next day around noon I was met once again by the deaf-mute, who indicated to me that his mother was worse, and that I come at once. The poor woman was weeping with pain, which seemed to have extended to other portions of her body. Her husband, as old and wrinkled as she, sat on the cot beside her, pressing and massaging her back in a vain effort to relieve the pain. She complained of blood in the urine, having started since the commencement of the medicine. (It has proved to be only the dye in the medicine but it frightened us both at first) I gave her a strong analgesic, which did little good, and at last had to put her on sedatives, which finally gave some relief. Not knowing what to do, I stopped all administration of sulfa, and little by little she improved.

As ever, troubles seem to come in numbers. The day that the old María turned for the worse with the medicine, was the same day that Adrián, whose temperature the day before had dropped to normal, suddenly took a turn for the worse, soaring to almost 105º. I feared it might be some sort of reaction to the medicine. (It wasn’t.)

The combination of these factors filled me with a sudden and stunning sense of failure. It seemed to me the inevitable nemesis for presuming to practice this art for which I was utterly untrained. I kept trying to reassure myself that if there were two or three patients who had taken a turn for the worse as a result of my administration, there were 100, 200 who had been relieved. But I could not reassure myself. “What if one of these patients died? What if two or even three died?” . . and the fault were mine. I was afraid.

I tried not to let my fear show, but as I made my way up the trail to see a woman on the east side of town who was stricken with severe bronchial asthma, an enormously ugly, stumpy, dirty-white, one-eyed dog which previously I had passed a dozen times before without disturbing, sensed my radiating fear and darted out suddenly, closing its jaws around my leg. Fortunately it was malnourished, and did not bite very hard.

GOYO AND HIS FAMILY

If there is one child in Ajoya that my heart has gone out more than all the rest, it is Gregorio Reyes. Goyo is eleven years-old, sprite-like, with a complexion fairer than most of type children here. His eyes are not the characteristic dark, dark-brown of the other children, but hazel. Goyo can see with only one of his eyes, and he has only one arm. Yet Goyo can hold his own with almost anyone. My heart goes out to him not because of his deficiency but because of his surplus, because he is so alive, so mischievous, so responsive, and -like many eleven year olds- so unfathomable.

The first time I saw Goyo was some eight months ago when our group from Pacific High School first brought medicines to the Sierra Madre. Accompanying us at that time was a kindly, middle-aged Mexican, named Antonio, also with only one arm, who had worked as gardener for the mother of one of our students.

Our group was sitting in one of the casas waiting for our burro driver when Goyo first appeared. Unlike the other children who crowded the doorway to stare mutely at the strange group of Gringos, Goyo stepped inside and greeted us individually with a radiant and welcoming smile. From the start, Antonio and Goyo, each missing an arm, identified with each other like brothers, and as we walked through